-The Week A revolutionary farming system is working wonders in Nalanda district Nalanda: If not for an agricultural technique known as SRI (system of rice intensification), Sumant Kumar of Darveshpura in Bihar's Nalanda district would have remained a faceless farmer. In 2012, with the help of the state agriculture department, he tried out SRI on an acre that usually bore only modest yields. It worked, and Sumant got a bumper harvest. An...

-The Business Standard A quick recap of the intensely fractured debate on GM crops and what the pro & anti arguments are. After nearly a decade of opposition, Environment Minister Veerappa Moily is finally expected to rule in favour of the contentious GM or genetically modified food crops in India. The Economic Times reports that this will "pave the way for the government to submit an affidavit in the Supreme Court agreeing...

-The Telegraph Kolkata: The Mamata Banerjee government today announced a scheme to allow big private investors to directly procure farm produce - a segment that Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee could not liberate from the stranglehold of the Forward Bloc. The scheme titled Brihat Krishak Bazar Yojana, which loosely translates into mega farmer market programme, seeks to "connect the local market to high-growth demand centres" and weed out middlemen. The project will allow private developers to...

-Frontline Professor Sukhpal Singh, a faculty member of the Centre for Management of Agriculture at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, has been researching and documenting the process of contract farming and food supply chains in India for more than a decade. He is of the view that the small farmer is being excluded in the method currently in place, which defeats the very purpose of improving Indian agriculture. Sukhpal Singh,...

-IANS Those who cherish India's constitutional values will find Gujarat Chief Minister Narenda Modi's boast to build a state of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (India's first home minister and deputy prime minister) taller than the Statue of Liberty rather chilling. By prizing nationalism over individual freedom, Modi may have once again revealed his illiberal nature. People who dislike this aspect of him, Leftists mainly, give vent to their disapproval by dismissing Modi's development...